A formerly honorable man trying far too hard to become President…
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would weep.

This man was a personal hero of mine a little while back. He went through hell on earth, and emerged with his integrity and his sense of humor.
It’s been very sad to watch him turn into an enabler of torture, an advocate of war without end, eager to impugn the patriotism of those who believe the infinitesimal chance of achieving “victory” in Iraq is not worth our blood and treasure.
This about-face #48 is yet more evidence that he’s joined forces with those in the Death Star. (That’s a reference to his own rhetoric in Michigan in 2000).

From Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution (Justice Story was also Professor of Law at Harvard University):
The remaining part of the clause [in Art. VI] declares, that “no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any religious test, or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off forever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in the history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of the civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility. The Catholic and the Protestant had alternately waged the most ferocious and unrelenting warfare on each other; and Protestantism itself, at the very moment that it was proclaiming the right of private judgment, prescribed boundaries to that right, beyond which if any one dared to pass, he must seal his rashness with the blood of martyrdom.

It would be closer to the truth to say that the Constitution established the United States as a white, male nation. I wonder if McCain would like to go for the Double Bonus and try to get the other foot in his mouth!

I also was a huge John McCain fan back in 2000. If he had won the nomination I would have voted Republican that year. Now I am just incredulous.

Note to Elvis Elvisberg:
I’m not much of a McCain fan, but he never was an “enabler of torture.” Quite the contrary. McCain was harshly critical of the Bush administration’s position on torture well before it was popular to do so.

The old McCain is still so close to the surface. He about broke my heart voting for the Military Tribunals Act and then redeemed himself by sponsoring the immigration bill. He corrupts himself and then becomes the old hero again. I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship.
I am as certain that the old R. base is washed away as he seems to be that he needs it. He doesn’t have to woo the Bush Republicans to win, but he needs to keep his base feeling that it takes courage and wisdom to support him and isn’t a waste of time.

Some Christians – those of certainty and absolutes – have made many people afraid. James Dobson comes to mind as one who has bullied and intimidated these past few years. Bill Donahue of the Catholic League is another. I just don’t think Jesus called us to be bullies for him. And I’m afraid that McCain – who made it through prisoner of war camp – did not make it through this kind of religious absolutism with nationalistic overtones that passes for Christianity in this superficial media driven culture. Damn – that’s a bad sentence. Sorry.
Christianity does not bully people – it loves them in such a way that they become less afraid, more honest. John McCain was the victim of a bombastic nationalism that claims Jesus but knows little of Jesus.
Say the word – Jesus – and you are in the club – even if you are vindictive, mean-spirited, violent etc. The thing is – that part is true – all you have to do is want this Jesus and no matter what – you are his. But that desire and wanting should lead us toward humility, love, and charity. that’s a hard journey. He was there once – until the bullies got to him.
John McCain wanted to be president very badly, but he let the pit bulls get to him. I wish he had not.
Someone said to me this week that faith is the opposite of certainty, it is about patience with our doubts. I wish he had had the faith to get through this thing called politics. I pray that someone on either side will call out this intimidating crowd – Woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees.

Oh, and Jim, I am a big McCain fan but he did vote for the Military Tribunals Act which was a lot softer on torture than McCain was before or since.

Reminds me of when Paul Tsongas called Bill Clinton a “pander bear.”
(Sigh.)

JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusvJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus
I’m out of breath and I still don’t think I am qualified to run for president yet. As a magic word, it is not working very well.
McCain seems like a nice guy who has been listening to either bad advisors or his own publicity. Either way, he has gone astray. He is not able to use the lingo or even fake the superficial stuff. If he is smart he will forget this 10 year old strategy and start to be more genuinely himself, more careful about choosing advisors, and spend time with voters and less with political prognosticaors and soothsayers.

Jim, McCain’s anti-torture rhetoric is laudatory, but he caved on his vote when the administration asked him to. Then President Bush attached his signing statement, which was even worse.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/09/senators-snatch-defeat-from-jaws-of.html

It’s a pattern now, isn’t it, of Republican leaders saying things they mostly know they really shouldn’t? But they do anyway. It used to be that they could never go wrong by going further right and, well, even less intellectual than before. Now they’re constantly surprised that the middle of opinion is always further left and more intelligent than they had figured.
It would surprise me if McCain recovers many more voters. My sense is that a set is sticking with him mostly because they don’t like the other candidates much.

You may want to read a bit of John Locke to see the truth behind who and what “founded” the United States of America. It was a majority of Christians and Christian “politicians.”
The ONLY reason that “America being a Christian Nation” is denied, is because “The Left” has so profoundly taken over the education process of Americans and the legions of anti-Americans coming out of John Dewey’s brain washing mills.
Umm, a question: How, or why, is being a Christian so bad?

Donny, why do you think being a Christian is bad? You get saved and everything!

Donny, your familiarity with the political writings of John Locke (d.1704) is most impressive! I wish you had treated us to one of your learned disquisitions, showing how, as you say, the “truth behind who and what ‘founded’ the United States of America” can be found therein. Should we also hunt through Hume and Montesquieu and Rousseau and Algernon Sidney and Trenchard & Gordon and Thomas Paine, or can we just stop with Locke? I sure hope we won’t need to resort to Aristotle’s Politics to resolve this important controversy.
Why not set out your whole invincible case, showing beyond the shadow of a doubt that America IS a Christian nation! That ought to shut the anti-Christians up once and for all.

Doug,
Donny didn’t say being Christian was bad. He asked why others seem to think it’s so bad. And I think that’s a good question to ask. What’s wrong with “Love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek”?
Oh, wait. This is probably where someone interjects with, “But Christians never totally live up to what they believe in.” What people seem to forget, though, is that Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc., — they also seem to have a hard time living up to what they profess to believe in. If we’re going to charge people with hypocrisy, then we have to charge people of EVERY faith.

If people refer to the US as a Christian nation – what do they really mean by that?? First we need to define the terminology – does that mean every American must attend church on Sunday? Or cross themselves frequently? Or just that Americans are ‘basically’ good, God-fearing, law-abiding people? (That last definition applies equally to Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, Hindu Americans etc). Sen. McCain is actually displaying his religious ignorance about Islam if he truly believes that a Muslim (who recognizes Jesus as a prophet!) is unfit to become President whereas he appears to be comfortable w/ a Jewish President (most Jews do not recognize Jesus as a prophet or Messiah – Muslims, just like Christians, are awaiting the coming of the Messiah – in both religions, Jesus is named as the Messiah who will return.) Sen. McCain certainly needs a crash course in world religion!
If being a Christian nation means believing in Jesus, then Muslims are closer to Christians than any other major faith tradition! Our magnificent country has a long tradition of religious pluralism which is enshrined in the Constitution, regardless of the fact that the founding fathers were predominantly Christian. Sen. McCain’s comments are offensive to all non-Christian Americans – shame on him!

“Sen. McCain’s comments are offensive to all non-Christian Americans – shame on him!”
Y’know, it’s not like wedding religion to politics does all that much good for Christianity, either.
I mean, the most sectarian of Christians would get to clap and dance and thump their chests for a few minutes after the president issued the executive order or whatever declaring America to be officially a Christian country.
But the the long steady inevitable humiliating suborning of religious ideals to political power would start to grind, after a while.
I daresay we’re witnessing that right now.

Of course no advanced country nowadays would make much of being ‘officially’ Christian, and even countries like the UK with a fairly long history of having an Established Church today have a church much less established than in the past, where rigorous religious tests were applied to practically every sort of official or semi-official position, including government posts, military appointments, professorships,and so on. One wonders what other countries would be on Sen. McCain’s “Christian country” list: all of the Western Hemisphere? All of Europe? Spain, but not France? Portugal but not Italy?
Since the basis for the assertion that “America is a Christian country” seems to be intentionally vague, one might ever say hare-brained, I’ve often wondered what in the world is meant by it. Either it’s a very trivial observation, that the vast majority of the Founders considered themselves to be Christians and thought that Christian morality was an excellent basis for civil harmony; or that, perhaps, today Americans are (possibly) more Christian than any other single faith. These, as I said are trivial observation.
The non-trivial assertion, that our Constitution does, or ought to, establish a government of an explicitly Christian character, is simply false.
Whether the Founders could have imagined a time when non-Christian immigrants and the rise of unbelief would so alter the cultural landscape is neither here nor there. In their wisdom, they provided a secular Constitution that has proved fully equal to the task of government under these much-altered social condition.

I have known Senator McCain for many years and am startled by this interview. Additional questions should be asked. Why does he feel compelled have a baptism now when he did not feel it was necessary three months ago? How often has he gone to church or had interaction with the church over the last 18 months? How often did he attend from 2000-the end of 2005? Why is he pandering? This man is NOT steeped in religious faith. If you stake your entire national political career on being a straight talker, you should be held to the standard you set. Had the Senator never chosen to agressively defy religion, this path would make sense, but he cannot strive for votes from all sides if his entire national persona is an in your face straight talker who does not want your vote if you don’t like his defiant straight talk. I have never witnessed a more stark example of how someone will do and say ANYTHING for their own personal ambitions. His judgment is lacking. He would not make a good President and should not be elected.

Well, Dilara, you made your point about accepting Muslims by putting Jews down. You said was that Muslims should be more aceptable by Christians than Jews because they accept Jesus as a prophet. This is a dangerous path to go down for Muslims, Christians and Jews.
The separation of religion and state has been good for all religions in America. I can walk down my street in Philadelphia and I will be in a 5 minute walk of churches of various denominations ,a synagogue and Unitartian Chuch as well.
SkipChurch, yes the founders were all well familiar with Jewish immigrants and with churches. I live in Philadelphia. The second oldest synagogue in American was found there in 1740. The founders were certainly aware and no problems with a Jewish community in Philadelphia.
“What’s wrong with “Love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek”?
When I read sections of the New Testament, as a Jew, there are sections that seem so hateful that I feel physically ill and my stomach churns. Yes, the New Tesatement is about love and turning the other cheek, but it is also about other things as well. The New Testament is part of early Christian polemics to prove the moral superiority of Christianity over Judaism.

McCain has long asserted, in various forms, that ours is a Christian nation. But he does not do so gently or without crude substrate.
When he was a Congessman from Arizona, representing a district that was also home to a mining company at which I was an officer, he held a campaign meeting durng which he asserted with some force that ours is a Christian nation. A young envronmental engineer who happened to be Jewish asked why McCain did not acknowledge the “Judeo-Christian” heritage of the nation, as was common among scolars.
McCain took such umbrage at the young man’s publicly differing on the subject that the following day he telephoned the company’s President, in its New York headquarters, recited his version of the encounter, and requested the young man be fired. The President passed the request to me preferring I discipline the engineer appropriately short of dismissal. I declined to tax him one iota.
McCain’s impairments on this entire subject run deep. No doubt his horrendous experience as a POW riveted home his religious values to great good effect — then. As for now, his undeniable streak of intolerance is not to be taken lightly.

Senator McCain is mistaken in saying that the framers of our Constitution (Sept 17 1787) established a Christian Nation. Nothing could be further from the truth. This nation was established during a time when our founding fathers were aware of a movement called “The Enlightenment”. Without delving into this deeply in this brief comment suffice it to say that Thomas Jefferson’s view of religion when asked was “Insofar as I know, I am the only member of the Religion that I am a part of”. And refer to the first line of the Declaration of Independence and you will find the words the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”. Christian thought? Hardly. Our founding fathers clearly based their wisdom on the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God thus establishing reason, truth, and a clear mandate to preserve our environment. Shame on Senator McCain.

Good for you Richard, in resisting the inappropriate, and I might add shocking wire-pulling by Sen. McCain to get an employee fired for asking a mild question that McCain in his benighted intolerance didn’t want to hear.
Frank Brunelle concisely indicates the strong undercurrent of deism and Enlightenment toleration that underwrote the Constitution. Jefferson was of course assailed as an atheist in the most extreme terms by his political opponents, but this did not prove fatal to his political aspirations.
I’ve often thought that the influence of both Quakerism, and Unitarianism, especially on the educated elite in the young republic, has been underemphasized. I was amazed to learn that from 1810 to 1933 all of the presidents of Harvard were Unitarians.

Well, I am kind shocked at the good senator’s remarks. I hope he himself at some point figures out just how shocking it is that he now stands in defiance of the constitution’s clear prohibition against religious tests for office-holders. For a man who presents himself as a pillar of pretty much everything the extreme right demands, he’s now looking to everyone like a simp, pandering to the loonies he once derided. Even his friends need to call him on this one.

there is no offical state religion and we’re forbidden to start one ..mccain is just wrong …unless he meant (which i doubt)that most americans are christian
we dont need a theocracy ..they tend to become abusive

When I read sections of the New Testament, as a Jew, there are sections that seem so hateful that I feel physically ill and my stomach churns.
The OLD testament has a lot of material in it too I’d consider hateful and stomach-churning (stoning of adulterers, people who wear cloths of different fabrics, etc).

SkipChurch: “I’ve often thought that the influence of both Quakerism, and Unitarianism, especially on the educated elite in the young republic, has been underemphasized.”
Exactly. Pennsylvania and particularly, Philadelphia were hubs for Quakers in the colony. They had a large influence in the delegations.

As a Christian, I find McCain’s remarks to be horribly offensive!
I find them to be both anti-US Constitution and anti-Chritian.
And an example of why people so quickly label Christians ‘bad’ because here is a US Senator spreading ignorance and bigotry. The Constitution represents the best of secular humanist thought at the time ..yes, its concepts of freedom and community are also found in many religious documents of many different religions. But nowhere in the Constitution can you find anything that is the sole teaching of the Christian religion …
or any other religion … it is the product of many years of people wrestling with what makes the best society … and we are still wrestling … that is why there are amendments …
I wish both parties and all the news media and everyone would just drop the whole discussion of religion from politics … completely …
let the candidates speak about how they will make this a better country and let each of us search our consciences on how to vote …
but I am not interested in their favorite prayers or scripture verses…I am intereste in what they have done in their public lives and in legislation to ” to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”

One of the great ironies is that the founders tried to avoid making the U.S. a Christian nation; they were aiming for higher morality.
They achieved it in good measure. Now even Christians endorse the founders thinking that religious freedom is a good idea, that the state has no real business dictating policy to churches and vice versa.
Christianity in America has come around to the founders’ view. That’s good. It’s inaccurate, however, to state that the nation was founded on principles Christians discovered after their value was established.

McCain will have nothing to explain. His confident assertion of facts that are just not true, his embrace of unvarnished intolerance, thanks to corporate media, are now pretty much within the American mainstream. Welcome back to the 13th century.

As a Southerner, a member of both the mainstream Methodist Church and Jim Wallis’s Sojourners/Call to Renewal movement, I am deeply offended by John McCain’s inference about the value–or lack of it–evidenced in any “religion” other than his own. One, I might add, that did not factor into his first campaign for the presidency.
I wouldn’t have voted for him in 2000, but I respected him as a patriot who had suffered for his country.
He seems to have gone over the edge here in a sad attempt to attract the narrow-minded “my-way-or-the-highway” religiosity bloc-for-power-sect which has, to paraphrase Tony Campolo, mixed the horse manure of politics with the ice cream of religion, to the detriment of faith.
We can only pray that this bigoted view is seen for exactly what it is: a desperate ploy to unite the (equally) bigoted pseudo-religious with a McCain bid for higher office. It’s sick. It’s sad. And it typifies the same dearth of good judgment we’ve been suffering from the top down for over 6 years.

McCain may have overstated his case when he said that the Constitution established America as Christian, but David Kuo has also overstated his case when he claimed that 200 years of jurisprudence missed that ‘fact’.
After all, though it is true that the Constitution contains numerous safeguards against any state religion, the political ideas on which it is based are _heavily_ influenced by Puritan pessimism concerning the nature of man. And that pessimism in turn was heavily influenced by Augustinianism.
Finally, though it is true (again) that there is no state religion, the _culture_ assumed and perpetuated by the Constitution really is predominantly Protestant. It is only relatively recently that various forms of materialistic secularism have taken the upper hand in Supreme Court decisions. But this may soon change, if, as so many suspect, the Chief Justice takes his marching orders from Opus Dei rather than from the Constitution;)

I never cease to be amazed at the lack of knowledge our politicians have about our “founding fathers.” Most of them would not fit the definition of Christian as defined by the religious right. For example, Jefferson was an ardent Unitarian who didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ; John Adams was also a Unitarian. Washington was a Deist. The idea that these products of the Enlightenment would feel the modern-day fundamentalists are their descendants is ludicrous. Most of them would be defined as very liberal Christians, if Christians at all, using today’s litmus tests.

Although I am a register Democrat, I was strongly leaning towards McCain, but now — no more. Anyone who says that the Constitution made America a Christian nation is woefully ignorant of our Constitution. I doubt any immigrant taking the test to be an American citizen would make such a gigantic blunder.
This is not a situation where he is being taken out of context, nor can we excuse him on the grounds he was talking privately only to Fundies and “humoring” them. This was a public interview for a web site that hosts all religions. I can only assume that John McCain actually believes that the Constitution made American a Christian nation.
What other fundamental Constitutional principles does John McCain ignore?
This has been a sad day — I was really looking to McCain for leadership.

How dissapointing. In 2000, he opposed the extreme religious(so-called) right, and now, in 2008, he does nothing but betray all he stood for in 2000. To call the USA a christian country would be tantamount to saying to all the other faith traditions “you exist at our sufferance, why don’t you leave.” Plus calling us a Christian country ignores a vast extent of our history. Since when does slave-trading, genocide of the Native Americans, bloodthirsty expansionist warfare, and the virtual deification of money count as christian principles?
Yep, he’s sold out.
ps. ‘there shall be no religious test for public office’
From the constitution.

A christian nation? Is christian nation is as a christian nation does, which means that there is no such thing as a christian nation. Never has been and never will be. THis is particularly so if you pay attention to the Bible which said: “strait is the gate and narrow thew way AND FEW THERE ARE WHO FIND IT” too few, I might surmise, to make up a nation.
The religious right do not want righteousness they want secular power, and prove themselves both biblically illiterate and apostate in their endeavour.
I do regret that the name of God is blasphemed because of these people and also that some will think me a religious rightist and zionist just because I am a christian. But then I know my bible too well for any of these things